Tag Archives: airplanes

Smoke

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Arizona is burning (again), but not here.

The other day, one of my editors asked me, in an e-mail message, whether there was smoke where I was. She lives in Salt Lake City, UT and smoke from fires all the way down near St. George was coming up her way. At the time, I reported that Howard Mesa was smoke free.

But yesterday morning, when I opened the camper door to let Jack out, I smelled smoke — enough of it to throw my shoes on and walk over to the shed, which has a view out to the west. I scanned the horizon, looking for the fire I smelled. But there was nothing definitive in any direction. (I have a good nose for smoke. When we lived in Bayside, NY, I once woke up in the middle of the night, smelling smoke. It turned out that a church 13 blocks away had burned to the ground during the night.)

SmokeI didn’t see or smell smoke all day yesterday. But in the evening, as the sun was setting, I saw the smoke on the northwestern horizon. Probably the fire out in the St. George area about 120 miles away. This morning, the smoke from Arizona’s big fire — the second biggest in its history — had drifted north, past the San Francisco Peaks, shrouding the eastern horizon. I almost missed the sunrise. The sun fought to be seen through the thick smoke, appearing as an orange globe poking out through the top of the thickest of it. There was little light from the sun at first. Then, when it broke clear of the cloud layer, I could feel its bright warmth. The smoke cloud faded back to a blue-gray blanket on the horizon.

As I type this, the Cave Creek Complex fire has burned 140,000 acres of Arizona desert. I’m not sure exactly where it’s burning, but descriptions of its progress has me worried about one of our favorite fly-in destinations, the landing strip at Red Creek on the Verde River. The Sonoran desert out there is beautiful, almost pristine because of its remoteness. The landing strip, although rough for airplanes, is fine for helicopters. There’s a picnic table there and a bunch of donated equipment, including lawn chairs, water bottles, and emergency equipment. There’s also a trail down to the river, that runs past an old bunkhouse. At the river, tall trees offer cool shade. A secluded paradise, a secret on the Verde River.

When the fire is finally out and the temporary flight restrictions removed, I’ll fly down there and see what’s left of the area.

No Thanks to the Media

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Media coverage of the Hassayampa River flooding turns Wickenburg’s airspace into a danger zone of low-flying aircraft.

Wickenburg was on the news quite a bit this past weekend. It seems that the Phoenix-area news teams heard about the damage on Jack Burden Road and decided to fly up to get some live footage. At various times, each of the Phoenix TV helicopters were in town, beaming images of the new waterfront housing back to the city. It was just the kind of disaster the media likes and they made good use of it.

Of course, it also created a tourist attraction for pilots in the Phoenix area. I nearly had a close encounter with one of them on Sunday.

I’d just departed the airport, heading out toward Lake Pleasant. My normal path takes me over the river near town. My normal altitude is 500 AGL, far below the altitudes most airplanes fly. So imagine my surprise when I saw a single engine airplane slightly below my altitude, flying right up the river toward me.

I took evasive action, veering to the east and climbing. (My usual evasive maneuver to avoid airplanes is to descend, since they’re normally above me, so this was weird.) “Airplane over Wickenburg, are you on frequency?” I asked into the radio.

No answer.

This pissed me off. The guy was less than 5 miles from an operating airport and he wasn’t even on the airport frequency. There were at least two other airplanes in the area — I’d heard both of them on the radio. There was a real danger of one of them meeting up with this idiot in the air.

“Wickenburg traffic, be advised that there is a low-flying airplane over the town, flying up the Hassayampa River. He is not on frequency.”

John, who was working at the FBO, made some comment I didn’t catch. The airplane passed below us, to our right. We continued flying out of town, now avoiding the river and any other aerial tourists it may have attracted.

The only thing I regret is that I didn’t get the jerk’s N-Number. He was close enough to see it, but I was more concerned with getting out of his way than identifying him. Next time will be different.